A decision-making tool based on decision trees for roughness prediction in face milling.

The selection of the right cutting tool in manufacturing process design is always an open question, especially when different tools are available on the market with similar characteristics, but marked differences in price, ranging from low-cost to high-performance cutting tools. The ultimate decision of the engineer will depend on previous experience with the life cycle of the tool and its performance, but without the support of a systematic knowledge base. This research presents a decision-making system based on soft-computing techniques. First, several experiments were carried out with four different cutting tools: two flat-milling low-cost tools without any surface treatment or coating and two high-performance, high-cost cutting tools in both cases with four cutting edges, similar geometrical features and diameters. Three different measures of tool wear are considered in the context of real workshop conditions: on-line power consumption, cutting length and volume of cut material. Finally, decision trees have been selected as the most suitable technique for building a decision-making system for two reasons: these trees show higher accuracy for the prediction of roughness in terms of tool wear and tool type. They also provide useful visual feedback on the information that is extracted from the real data, which can be directly used by the process engineer.